Viscountess Bury

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The Viscountess Bury was an electrically powered boat. It was planned by Moritz Immisch and William Keppel, Viscount Bury , and designed and built by a boat builder in Chiswick and delivered in 1888.

history

Moritz Immisch, an electrical engineer of German origin, and William Keppel, Viscount Bury, chairman of Westminster Elektro-Traktion Co. founded a company to develop and build electrically powered trams , trains and ships. The background was the exploitation of the patent for electric motors that was granted to Immisch. The boatbuilder services Sargeant & Co. in Chiswick was to build a large, electrically powered boat, named after the wife of Viscount Bury, Sophia Keppel, Viscountess Bury the order by this company Viscountess Bury received.

The Viscountess Bury was delivered on October 8, 1888 and was one of the largest electrically powered boats at the time. It was the predecessor of a large fleet of 23 electric boats that were used for rental by Moritz-Immisch Electric Launch Co. after delivery on the Thames . For this purpose, several charging stations were built and operated in the course of the river . An 1893 map of the Thames shows eight electric boat charging points between Kew (Strand-on-the-Green) and Caversham. In 1902 there were over 20 charging stations on land and two floating charging stations.

Between 1889 and 1896 the Viscountess Bury was chartered by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII . Thereafter, the boat was used on the Upper Thames until 1909 in regular passenger traffic.

The Viscountess Bury was listed in the register as an electric boat until 1909. After that it was equipped with a gasoline engine. In 1910 it was taken over by HC Banham, boat builder in Cambridge , and transferred to King's Lynn . Here she worked for many years between Cambridge, Clayhithe, Ely and Denver in various functions as a public transport boat , floating restaurant and private charter ship. An extensive overhaul took place in 1972. The hull was painted white, it got new canopies and awnings and a 50-hp diesel engine. In 1988 the Viscountess Bury celebrated its centenary as the oldest wooden passenger ship in Great Britain. Around 2000 it was taken to the River Board Yard in Roswell Pits, where it was viewed and analyzed for the upcoming renovation. Despite efforts by various people and the Electric Boat Association to preserve it, it was scrapped in 2005.

description

The Viscountess Bury was around 20 meters long, 3 meters wide, had a draft of 0.35 meters, a measurement of around 12 GT and could carry up to 80 passengers. Initially, the two propellers were driven by two electric motors with a nominal speed of 600 / min (1700 / min according to another source) and a nominal output of around 7 kW (9 kW according to another source), which were powered by batteries from the Electric Power Storage Company 200 battery cells were fed. This meant that the ship ran a maximum of 13  knots or around 5 knots for about 10 hours. Depending on the voltage (65, 95 and 120 volts) an output of 1.5 to 12 hp was achieved.

The batteries located in the stern were charged overnight by steam-powered generators , which were located on their own 24-meter-long power generation barge, as there was no public power supply yet.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Viscountess Bury. In: National Historic Ships UK. Retrieved December 26, 2016.